The tribute to the pope of François Euvé, theologian and writer
After a year of seminar, Jorge Bergoglio decided to enter the Jesuits’ novitiate. His career in the Company of Jesus, where he quickly held important functions (master of novices, provincial, responsible for training) was not simple.
The divisions of the province of Argentina, against the backdrop of revolutionary movements and dictatorship, were the cause of its sidelining, before the archbishop of Buenos Aires came to seek him to make him his coadjutor. Despite these difficulties, Jorge Bergoglio always remained attached to the company. From his election to the pontificate, he asked to meet the superior general, Father Adolfo Nicolas, with whom relations were always more than cordial.
His way of proceeding remained marked by spirituality and Ignatian tradition. And in particular by discernment which consists of “a reading of reality in the light of the Gospel” (1).
It proceeds from a deep humility, of the recognition that none of us alone has a truth that transcends us because, in Christian perspective, it identifies with the person of Christ. François challenged the idea of an “absolute” truth, that is to say detached from real life, not in favor of a “relative” truth (to each his truth) but of a “relational” truth, for it is ultimately “the love of God for us in Jesus Christ” (2).
Discernment is done from Holy Scripture, read and interpreted in an always singular context. In the Constitutions of the Company of Jesus, Saint Ignatius defines with great care the various aspects of the life of the Jesuits, while always ending with the incise “taking into account the circumstances of time, places and people”.
There is the welcome of a god who turns out to be overlooking history there, but in the concrete of his unfolding. This implies a dialogal attitude, which “launches bridges” rather than “drawing up walls”, a call to meeting whose listening is the prior layout. “God appears in crossroads”, often unexpectedly, at the heart of meetings based on a bias of confidence and a positive vision of the human.
A final point is the missionary dimension, characteristic of the Jesuits who are men “on the borders”. François spoke of “peripheries”. He challenged himself from a church that would only be at the service of herself, a community of rare “elected” who would protect himself from a world deemed hostile. He went out to meet others, such as missionaries, like Fr. Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit of the 17th century, which the Pope estimated a lot.
